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AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

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Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#191

Post by vin047 »

smarterhome wrote: post #81

AdGuard Home is amazing! I used PiHole for a time but did run into small issues quite at lot. Mind you nothing serious but things like these are only really useful if they just work. Adguard Home works without any issues on my Pi setup via docker-compose [1] and it even runs on a second Pi as backup using a cool container called adguardhome-sync [2] to keep their configurations in sync. I am not seeing any ads in my…

The real eye-opener is when you start redirecting DNS 53 requests to your own DNS server and block DoT/DoQ/DoH – so many devices/apps just trying to reach out to their hardcoded DNS servers for tracking/ad targeting.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#192

Post by vin047 »

bityard wrote: post #43
Naac wrote: post #19

Anyone know of an Adguard home or pihole equivalent service I can run as part of OPNSense? I currently have a different machine dedicated to pihole, but it would be intriguing to have something built in. I would imagine split DNS and firewall rules would be simpler this way.

I'm in the process of migrating my OPNSense to a virtual machine so that I can run whatever network-related services I want right along side it in a container or VM. I used to scoff at those enterprising homelabbers who apparently stuck their firewall in a VM just because they could but I get it now. It's super nice to be able to just snapshot and back up the whole VM, and run whatever you want alongside it. (Althoug…

Ditto, just recently set mine up this way. Will never go back to ISP or proprietary routers.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#193

Post by muppetman »

readscore wrote: post #182
muppetman wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblocking via the browser is the best option if it's available. All the games the kids play on their iPad try to insert ads, track them, all that sort of stuff and DNS based Adblocking stops that. My wife's iPhone isn't subject to ads when she's reading the news in Safari. On my Google Pixel I don't see ads in browsers either, Firefox I use uBlock but even the Google Newsfeed uses Chrome for webview, so DNS adblocki…

> There's so many places other than "the browser" to see ads, to even question that seems like not really having knowledge of what the Internet is used for in 2024. I understand that many people use apps and smart TV sticks, but I'd forgotten that many have ads. I use some apps, but none that have ads. My family use apps but say that they appreciate targeted ads.

Yea sorry I've updated my comment to reflect the fact the way I phrased that was quite rude - my apologies.

For the silly games my kids play on their iPad, blocking ads means they can "skip" ahead quite often instead of being forced to watch an ad before they're allowed to try again/progress to the new level. They're subject to enough advertising with Youtube anyway, just from all the content they watch that's subtle advertising.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#194

Post by mrcarruthers »

tills13 wrote: post #150
seanieb wrote: post #137

AdGuard is a Russian company, with Russian engineers, the majority of AdGuard developers and other employees working from Moscow, registered in Cyprus. Not a great recipe. Hard pass on security grounds.

It's open source you can verify it yourself.

Technically, yes you can. But do you really have the time to sit down to understand a piece of software enough to know if it's doing anything nefarious?

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#195

Post by Brajeshwar »

I used Pi-Hole, then went to NextDNS, then to AdGuard DNS, tinkered with AdGuard Home, and currently testing Control-D. They are all actually pretty good, similar features, and it has become just a matter of personal choice.

In all fairness, when I have some time and can invest in decent hardwares, I might go back to AdGuard Home with one of the paid services as backup for travel, and for the other family members.

Pi-Hole works really well but once-a-while, when I'm traveling, it will decide to act up and it's a whole IT support with the family over phone for minutes if not hours. I'm not smart enough to setup a secure enough tunnel and the like, and haven't read up enough on the topic. This follows similar pattern with AdGuard Home.

NextDNS, AdGuard DNS, Control-D are easy and just works, especially with the devices that the family uses. I think I bought one of those AdGuard Lifetime license, so I use that to block client-side rendered ads in conjunction with either AdGuard DNS or NextDNS or Control-D. Right now, Control-D is doing pretty good with my test-drive.

Edit: The other reason is that many websites such as the Governments’, Banks (at-least in India) seldom works with Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home. With the other tools, I can turn off for a while, and go Internet-Naked and do the transactions, pay the insurance, etc.

https://adguard-dns.io

https://nextdns.io

https://controld.com

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#196

Post by Brajeshwar »

zukzuk wrote: post #2

I looked at Pi-hole recently but went with AdGuard Home. Nicer UI and nicer everything by all appearances. There's also a surprising amount of customization for something this slick, like being able to defer to my internal DNS for local private domain queries, etc. I'm not entirely sure why AdGuard is giving this away, and maybe I should look into that, but seemed like a relatively low-risk decision to go with this f…

> I'm not entirely sure why AdGuard is giving this away

Here is my reasoning. I can read up the documentation and set it up and get it working. I'm going to brag to my friends about how my home network has no pesky ads and stuff. They will ask me to “Set up for me, Set up for me.”

I cannot help them maintain, even if I do set it up for them, so -- I'm going to say, “You know what, instead of that complexity, they have a simple app-based setup that just works for just $29 a year for your whole family.”

See, I just got five of my friends to download and buy the service in that dinner party.

I believe this is the same philosophy of todays' tech Startups -- have an Open Source Product but build a commercial business on top of that.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#197

Post by hbcondo714 »

pseufaux wrote: post #181
hbcondo714 wrote: post #152

There are a few mostly positive comments here about NextDNS but I'll start a new comment since I'm thinking about switching away from NextDNS. Why? I'm on a Mac / Safari now and would like to enable their "Hide IP address from trackers" feature but if I do, then I start seeing advertisements on websites that would normally be blocked by NextDNS. So I have to uncheck this option and can't use Apple's feature. Overall,…

Are you referring to iCloud Private Relay? If so that's expected behavior for with any DNS based ad blocker. Turning on the relay proxies your connection and your local network's DNS server will not be used. Doesn't matter if it's PiHole, NextDNS, or AdGaurd.

Thanks, I did not think of that but iCloud Private Relay requires an iCloud+ subscription[1] which I do not have.

I'm referring to the "Limit IP Address Tracking" option[2] in Safari/iOS and "Hide IP address from trackers" option[3] in MacOS/Safari

[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/set-up-icloud-private...

[2] https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...

[3] https://appletoolbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Hide-IP-...

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#199

Post by schleck8 »

i2shar wrote: post #50
JadoJodo wrote: post #3

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This is…

Haven’t used NextDNS but have used PiHole and currently running AdGuard Home. But if you are paying $20/year just for DNS encryption/blocking, you may consider upgrading to Mullvad which gives you DNS Ad blocking but also IP anonymity, tunneling etc.

The issue being that it decreases your connection speed and increases your latency while good DNS naturally doesn't.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#200

Post by snailmailman »

JadoJodo wrote: post #3

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This is…

I run a pihole server for myself- and access it over VPN when I’m traveling. But I’ve tried NextDNS and can confirm it works pretty well. Set my grandmother up on the free tier and within the first week it stopped her from getting phished, because the scam text she clicked went to a site that wouldn’t resolve.
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